Elite partners – with funds up to $ 300K – train clients on how to navigate the world of dating: It’s deceiving women over 40, experts say.

Then it hit him: He needed the same kind of help he would get if he were trying to achieve something in any other job he wasn’t an expert at.

“I’m going to be at a pickleball competition in three weeks, so what do I do? I’m doing a lesson on a pickleball coach,” said DeCesare, 55, who now owns his own ReLaunch company in Colorado. “You don’t try to do it yourself. He goes with the best.”

Insert the match.

Through an acquaintance, DeCesare met Shannon Lundgren, a Harvard MBA living in San Francisco who had just launched her professional matchmaking service, Shannon’s Circle. On Lundgren’s third planned date, DeCesare met her future husband, to whom she has been married for nearly 11 years.

“Why do this alone if you can maximize success, get there faster?” DeCesare says. “That’s what this is. Start living, and start living fast.”

Doing the same is big business

Although it accounts for less than a quarter of the dating industry estimated to be worth $4 billion by 2024 in the US alone, matchmaking—not just matchmaking, but true one-to-one matching has made a real comeback over the past twenty years. Long relegated to the shadows of dating sites and apps, the centuries-old practice has re-emerged as the method of choice for those with the means to pay for it and the willingness to pool their energy in a third-party search for love.

“People have recently become more comfortable outsourcing their love lives, as if they could hire a personal trainer at the gym or a private chef to cook for them,” said Rachel Greenwald, a US-based actress and Harvard Business School executive. person, whose premium services command anywhere from $10,000 to $75,000 per month and a minimum commitment of three months.

Not everyone can hire a personal trainer or a private chef, of course. But even at the lowest levels, human matching is nothing like algorithmic dating, and the prices—around thousands of dollars or more—reflect that.

Exact numbers are not available, as I found out when talking to several professional partners about the growth of the industry. For one thing, no license is required for this activity, and most of it is unregulated. “It’s really what I would call the Wild West,” Greenwald said. “There are a lot of mom and pop businesses.”

However, those who know, business is booming. From fifty partners to one in the US at the turn of the century, New York actress Lisa Clampitt says, there are now more than 5,000. in the US only. “The industry is growing at 100%,” he said.

Many customers, who say they are raters, have grown tired of the online/app approach to dating, or decided their time investment wasn’t paying dividends. In some services, on the other hand, helicopter parents trying to get their older kids matched—or advised on dating skills themselves—can account for a third or more of their business. (Parents can pay the fee, but they have no input into the process, the partners say.)

Clampitt, a former social worker, jumped into the business in 2000 by establishing his eponymous company, which caters to wealthy New Yorkers. A few years later, he founded the Matchmaking Institute, now known as the Global Love Institute, which provides matchmaking certification and training, proposes ethical guidelines and functions as a trade association of partners to share resources and best practices. The Institute’s Global Love Conference on May 8th in New York was billed as the largest gathering ever.

Modern matchmaking is not at all like its “Your aunt has someone to meet” antecedent. Matchmakers say that while their clients often want a committed relationship, marriage is not always—or often—the goal, one reason why a thorough screening and interview process is required beforehand. A newly divorced person, for example, may want to meet a variety of people and feel good about themselves again, Greenwald said.

While many services take clients from all backgrounds, some operate in very specific areas, whether religious, geographic, sexual or otherwise. Michal Naisteter runs a service that focuses on Jewish sports in Philadelphia–“It’s an interesting microcosm of dating,” he says. “It’s a very diverse city and the birthplace of America, but most of the ‘local’ people have lived here for a long time, bought homes, and stayed loyal to their clubs. I can’t tell you how many people I meet who feel like they know everyone, but they really don’t.”

With price ranges ranging from about $10,000 to $300,000 or more, partners often act as relationship concierge services, helping clients avoid time-consuming online or app-based profiles for potential dates. Greenwald says he might screen and interview 10 to 20 people to create a single profile that he presents to a client—a “curative” process, as he calls it.

Elite partners and their VIP customers

Elite level partners with anyone Good luck he said they keep a very short list of clients at any given time, sometimes half a dozen or less, so they can stay focused on VIP needs and respond quickly. (At the lower end of the cost spectrum, clients can expect more of an agency approach—less expensive, but also more personal.)

“If we do a national search, it means only a few clients at a time,” said Cat Cantrill, who runs an Iowa-based agency that can search coast to coast for a client match.

Cantrill has been coaching women on how to navigate the world of dating, online and otherwise, for several years before making the leap into dating in 2020. He still does both, which seems to be the norm in the business. Several partners said they also advise clients on clothing, personal branding, setting up online profiles and the like.

And despite the lack of a license or mandatory certification, modern matchmaking is clearly a business venture, with high-level profits that can reach seven figures. However, for that to happen, they must pay attention to their goal as they seek the right match or successful experience for their customers.

Rachel Greenwald, for example, only works with male clients in part because that’s what the statistics say. Many other partners do the same.

“The average matchmaker customer is over 40 because the price is so high that young people generally can’t afford it,” Greenwald said. “Over the age of 40, there is a very high number of beautiful single women, and a very low number of beautiful men – and most of those men want to date women 10 years younger because they want to have children. So there is this market pressure on women.”

Matchmakers, Greenwald says, sometimes have to balance the opportunity cost of introducing a client to a potential match against paying another client with a perhaps more extensive to-do list. The successful ones, he says, think like lawyers in terms of the hourly rate they want to pay and the work they’re likely to do.

They should also be unsympathetic – in their own compassionate way. Greenwald says the best partners are attentive, connected listeners who can turn away 50% or more of their clients simply because they don’t believe they can help those people find a match or have a great trip.

“We are not magicians. That is very important for people to know about this business. It’s not like we give someone a menu and let them order a la carte, whatever they want.”

If it works, on the other hand, it can be great. Most partners agree that “success” is in the eye of the client, whether it’s a fulfilling relationship, marriage or just a process of self-discovery. But seeing people click and fall in love, they say, never gets old.

New York’s Clampitt says: “People are becoming so successful that they’re up the mountain by themselves—and I find that challenge very powerful. “I help people get into another skill, which is completely different than success in business.”

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